On the Prowl (Alpha & Omega 0.5)(78)
The dragon was Tanet, my newly discovered brother. He'd refused to allow me to go back "into the world of men" without him. He seemed to view New York as a place filled with both wonders and horrors too great to describe, and believed that my willingness to travel there showed great fortitude.
At the moment, I kind of agreed with him. Damn it, we hadn't moved in five minutes! There simply had to be a wreck up ahead somewhere.
"I think we could get there faster by walking," Heidar grumbled, echoing my thoughts. Tanet didn't say anything, being occupied with his lunch. Despite the fact that he was in human form - a gangly, red-haired teenager - his meal consisted of a squirming sack of live rats. I was very carefully not looking at him in the mirror. He had offered me a terrified-looking specimen shortly after we got under way and my dragon twin had immediately started mewling hungrily. Apparently, it hadn't thought much of the salad I'd had for lunch. I'd tamped it down and smiled a refusal at him. My inner beast could damn well learn to eat tofu and like it.
While I glared at the unmoving line of traffic, a woman in the next lane caught sight of Heidar. She stared in open-mouthed astonishment until she rammed her car into the SUV in front of her. I realized that he wasn't wearing his usual all-encompassing cloak, maybe because it was about ninety degrees outside. The Fey timeline doesn't move at the same speed as the human, a fact I'd realized when we arrived back from a week in Faerie to discover that New York had progressed from a cold spring to a scorching summer.
Whether the rune could have lain undiscovered at Gerald's for so long was problematic. But it hadn't been listed for sale again, and no Svarestri army had suddenly appeared in anyone else's lands. So we were hopeful, assuming we could ever make it back to Gerald's in the first place.
"Can you do anything about that?" I demanded, as the woman, heedless of the angry cries of the other drivers, got out of her car and ran over to peer in the passenger window. Wonderful.
Heidar blinked at me as she began hammering on the glass. "Such as?"
"You could try to stop glowing!"
"You know I can't do anything about that."
"Then tell her to go back to her car and forget about us!" I scanned the area for police, but mercifully didn't see any. We had enough weapons in the car to outfit a small army, none of which were registered with the NYPD. I hoped Heidar could manage a strong enough suggestion to overcome her interest; if not, we were in trouble because I certainly couldn't. No magic means no magic, and that includes the mind control variety.
He rolled down his window, but that only made things worse. The driver of the SUV and a motorcycle messenger boy soon joined the woman, worshipping at the new shrine of Heidar. "Do something!" I hissed frantically.
"I'm Alma," the woman breamed, drinking him in with her eyes. "I work for Manhattan Models, and I have to tell you, my boss would offer you a contract before you finished walking through the door! Let me give you my card - "
"I'm Steve," the SUV guy said, thrusting a hand in the window and trying to muscle Alma out of the way. "I'm a freelance photographer, and buddy, could you and I make a mint! We gotta talk - "
He was cut off by a precisely aimed elbow to the ribs. Yeah, Alma was a native. "Back off, I saw him first!"
"It's a free country, lady," Steve gasped, and grabbed for the window ledge. That resulted in a tug of war that landed them in a scuffling fight outside our car. The motorcycle messenger quietly took their place. He didn't say anything, even to introduce himself, just stood there staring at Heidar with a look of wonder.
"I'm open to suggestions," Heidar informed me dryly.
"Do a glamour!" I whispered, having just sighted a red-and-blue light weaving its way toward us. It was pretty far back, but the cop was on a motorcycle, meaning he would be here soon even if the line didn't move. Come on, I thought desperately, how long had we been sitting here? I hit the horn. "Let's move, people!"
"Your power makes working any magic much more difficult," Heidar reminded me. "We don't know what we'll find at the auction house. I cannot afford the drain of a prolonged glamourie."
Tanet caught my eye in the mirror and grinned, his teeth as red as his hair. He rolled his eyes at Heidar and shook his head. Tanet could understand a little English, but so far he spoke about the same number of words of my language as I did of his - roughly five. But he got his point across.
"We aren't going to find anything if we're in jail!" I said. The delivery van in front of me lurched forward a few yards, and I followed on its bumper. Heidar's congregation jogged after us, their vehicles abandoned in their wake.
Alma, looking ruffled and with a tear in her blouse, reached us first. She shoved a card in Heidar's face. "My business number is on the front, but wait - let me give you my home number, too." She started searching frantically in her purse for a pen. "Call me anytime, I mean that!" I noticed her wedding ring and wondered how much her husband would appreciate getting a midnight message from a male client, but the thought didn't appear to faze Alma. Or maybe it simply hadn't occurred to her. She looked pretty bemused.
"The human authorities are the least of our worries," Heidar intoned darkly.